Experiments Never Fail !!!!!

Those are the immortal words of Max Elmore as he stated them in "THE MAX STRATEGY" by Dale Dauten.  What you may ask, do they have to do with this blog?  In a nutshell, everything.  Let me explain.

Raising goats, and farming for that matter, have always seemed to be a fairly simple proposition.  If you do this you should likely get that result.  Of course the weather and various plagues can interfere with attaining your desired results, but for the most part you reap what you sow.  The challenge here is that for millenia, the precedent to sowing was plowing.  We as farmers became masters of plowing, whether it was behind an ox or horse, or one of the modern versions of the horse and you pulled your 16 bottom plow around with a 450 horsepower Case IH tractor.  The end result was always the same, the soil on the top was buried under the soil that was on the bottom.  It makes perfect sense to do this, doesn't it?  After I sat through a presentation by Ray Archuleta of the NRCS last winter at the Annual Winter Green-Up Conference, I couldn't go out and put a plow to anything.  He likened plowing to a volcanic eruption, tsunami, earthquake and tornado all at once to your soil microbes.  It is your microbes and earthworms that indeed create that most precious of all resources, topsoil.  Plowing literally destroys the topsoil and with it your future ability to grow crops.  What is a caring farmer to do?

The answer to that dilemma is of course No-Till!  Problem is that I don't own a single piece of equipment that was designed to plant anything right into the sod.  And beyond that, how do you grow a crop like corn without eliminating all the competition?  Spraying herbicides to kill everything on the field is NOT an option for me.  This was the what I faced as I went through the summer and needed to improve some pasture that will be needed by the goats as we grow into the future.  Enter Max and his dictum that "Experiments Never Fail".

Now, if you read my previous blog you can see me out on an obviously tilled field planting Triticale and Oats.  That field has a very noxious weed on it named Nutsedge.  Nutsedge is very persistent and difficult to control.  That field was gone over with a set of discs to weaken the plants before planting.  This field is a multi-year project to rejuvenate the plant species growing there.  The field below that one has much less nutsedge, but could use an infusion of better varieties of pasture plants to make it more productive.  The challenge came in that we did not want to destroy what was already there.  The plan to renovate now became an experiment, and as we all know, "Experiments Never Fail"!

The goats even got a chance to help with this plan.  The doe herd was put on this field and grazed across it in strips to eat it down as hard as they could.  They did a great job at doing what they do best, eating.  As soon as they had finished I went to work and "No-Tilled" some Creekside forage mix from King's Agriseeds right onto the existing sod.  The key was the timing.  I planted as soon as they were calling for several days of rain and steady showers.  That should get the seed settled right down to the soil and give it enough moisture to germinate and start growing.  The challenge here was that I have an old MF 33 grain drill that was not designed to plant into sod, but rather into a well prepared seedbed.  The experiment is to see if by using the goats and timing the planting before a rain the new seeds will grow and add to the quality of the pasture.  If that doesn't happen, at least we will know what not to do in the future.  Experimenting with what we have and $300 worth of seed sure beats going out and plunking down $15,000 for a new "No-Till" drill that is specifically designed and built to plant crops right into the heaviest of sods.

So for now, all we have to do is wait and see what happens, and in the meantime spread a little compost on the fields to feed all those microbes and worms we have working for us out there.  I hope they appreciate my willingness to give them a good home in exchange for improving the quality of the topsoil here at Sunny Acres.  After all, it is that thin veil of living soil that feeds the world.  We will do our best to preserve that for the future, even if it means thinking outside of the box on current wisdom and practice to do something different.  At least we know for sure that no matter what, "Experiments Never Fail!".

Summer's end is at hand.....

 

Many months ago when I last sat at this computer and wrote a blog I was finishing my class work for my Business Degree.  I foolishly thought that I would now have lots of time for keeping up with the posting of new items in a timely manner.  Who was I kidding!?!  Myself, it turns out.  The spring moved quickly into summer and with that all of the busyness of trying to get everything done that needed to be accomplished.

Today I can sit here and write because it is raining non-stop outside and I am at a standstill with all my projects until it stops or I can go and get some supplies for inside projects.  Today's rain storm has a name, Lee.  It is not as bad as last weeks storm, Irene that left us with 7 1/2 inches of rain in 24 hours.  We were lucky!  We only had water in the pasture, and even though it was more than anyone had ever seen it was gone in a few days.  I am sure that most everyone has seen the devastation that was wreaked by that storm, so you will agree that indeed we were quite fortunate here at Sunny Acres.  The bit of good fortune we had with the storm was that only the day before I had planted 6 acres of Tritical and Oats for late fall and early spring pasture for the goats.  The wet and warm weather had it up and growing within days.

Working backwards through the summer is sort of like playing one of those Super 8 family movies in reverse.  The most recent stuff is most vivid in the memory and the rest just sort of fades into the cobwebs that seem to be everywhere these days.  We did have a very nice visit recently from Erin, of Heritage Foods, for the "No Goat Left Behind" promotion they are working on.  We had a nice visit on a not so pleasant day (totally socked in with clouds and drizzle) and we got to share a lot of our story with them during the interview.  We are planning to provide some market kids for their promotion this fall and they wanted to see the animals and the farm they are raised on.  We are looking forward to this relationship and hope it leads to more opportunities for the meat goat industry in the Northeast.

Just prior to the visit from Erin, Dr. tatiana Stanton spent part of a day with us to gather the final data for the Cornell Lambing and Kidding Survey.  We were participants for the first time this year and found it to be a great opportunity for learning and a lot of reflection about why we do some of the things we do.  Of course we had a good year with relatively few problems and the ones we encountered seem to be behind us.  We have changed some of our management practices to mitigate as many of these problems as possible and we will see if these changes are long term solutions, or just stop gap measures.  More on these in other blogs as we see the long term results.

Another event of the summer we participated in was the Batavia Kill Stream Festival.  We provided goat meat in several forms for the chefs associated with "Green Peas" TV to prepare and serve to the participants at the festival.  I met one of the chefs, Noah Sheets, who is the executive chef for the Governor's mansion and who was preparing some of the dishes with the goat meat we provided through our friends at Pure Catskills.  From what we heard, the event was a great success and the goat was a big hit.  It is a great opportunity to get people who may have never tasted goat to get to try some in such a fantastic setting as this festival.  Our hats are off to all those who worked so hard to make this event a success.

Of course, a major and necessary project this summer was the harvesting of the hay crop.  Even though we were a little behind getting started because of the weather, we made great progress and put a very nice crop of  hay in the barns.  This is always a family project and my sons, son-in-law, and daughter-in-law were right there to put away each load as it came to the barn.  We got every bale in without any damage from rain, which gave us a nice supply of very green, leafy hay to use and sell.  We made a commitment to test this year's crop for nutrient value and our Extension Agent, Mick Bessire, loaned us a sampling probe and instructed us in the proper methods to get a good, representative sample.  The samples have been sent off and we should be getting the results back soon, to let us know what we need to supplement with for the herd.  Knowing this information will give us an opportunity to more efficiently maintain the animals.

The summer did seem to fly by with all of the day to day busyness of mowing lawns, planting and caring for the garden and even getting in a few days of leisure activity, such as taking the boat out on the river.  It is hard to believe that it is now past and the garden is starting to wind down, the pool needs to be closed and the boat put away for the winter.  But, the grass still grows like crazy, the pastures are still being rotated, seedings still need to be planted (rye as a cover crop for a new sweet corn patch) and goats need to be readied for marketing in the late fall.  The day to day activities are still very much with us, even though the days are growing shorter.  The time for wood cutting is upon us to prepare for winter's cold blasts.  Second cutting hay beckons us from the fields across the tracks.  Planning for next year is already in progress with anticipated seedings for the spring/summer season of 2012 and, most urgently, we need to finalize the breeding plan for the goats.  Who will be with which buck and what will be our plan moving forward?  Of course, these are all topics for blogs in the coming weeks and months ahead.  Hopefully, I will make an effort to sit at the computer in the long evenings to come and share some of the thoughts which wander around in my mind on a daily basis.

Until next time, stay warm and dry.